That Lib Dem reshuffle in full

Sarah Teather demoted, David Laws promoted. David Heath and Simon Hughes swap jobs. Er, that's it.

Seriously, it is high time Ming reshuffled himself. His credibility is shot to pieces over the Ashdown/Williams job offers, his support in the south is already under threat from Cameron's Liberal Toryism - and now Gordon Brown has stolen one of the key raisons d'etre of the Lib Dems and their predecessor parties over the past 30 years - the fact that they were the only ones committed to a thoroughgoing reform of our constitution and system of government.

At the last election, there were three other good reasons for voting Lib Dem - the fact that they had far and away the most decent of the three main party leaders in Charles Kennedy, their progressive taxation policies which would have benefited most hard-working families while making the absurdly rich pay a little bit more, and their opposition to the war in Iraq.

But Kennedy has gone, so have the progressive taxation policies, and Iraq won't be the defining issue in British politics forever. I am at a loss to know where on earth the Lib Dems go from here - and more importantly, so is Ming.

Will Cruddas rue the day he turned down Gordon Brown?

Thirty years ago, a talented young Labour backbencher by the name of Neil Kinnock was offered a job as a junior education minister in Jim Callaghan's government. He turned it down, and some thought he would see out his career as a member of the left-wing awkward squad alongside the likes of Denis Skinner and Willie Hamilton. Instead, six years later he was leader of the Labour Party.

Last week, the talented backbencher Jon Cruddas, who came a creditable third in Labour's deputy leadership election, rejected the offer of a government job from Gordon Brown. Explanations vary, but the consensus among Labour-watchers seems to be that Gordon offended his amour propre by not offering him a more senior role.

I supported Cruddas for the deputy leadership, and was glad to have done so. In my opinion he lost the election but won the campaign - much as Kinnock was said to have done in the general election of 1987.

That said, I think he has made a serious mistake by refusing Gordon's offer to join the government, one which, unlike Kinnock, he will come to regret.

I have no doubt that what scuppered Cruddas was Gordon Brown's decision to award the job of party chair, as opposed to Deputy Prime Minister, to the victorious candidate, Harriet Harman. Cruddas was patently running for the job of party chair throughout the election and, had Harman been given the DPM role, the job could still have been his.

Alternatively, he could - and should in my view - have been made Housing Minister having done so much to put the issue of affordable social housing on the agenda during the course of the campaign. But the inexplicable non-promotion of Yvette Cooper meant there was no vacancy in that role.

In the light of these unpalatable truths, Cruddas really should have swallowed hard and accepted whatever he was offered - apparently a Labour vice-chairmanship reporting to Harman coupled with a regional ministerial brief.

But he walked away from the opportunity to serve a Prime Minister who is currently carrying all before him, and having turned down Gordon once, I personally think it is unlikely he will be asked again.

So what now for Cruddas? Well, the Kinnock parallel is again instructive. Had Labour won the 1979 general election, it is inconceivable that the Welshman would have become party leader in 1983. Denis Healey would have inherited, and eventually the leadership would have passed to a right-winger like Roy Hattersley or John Smith.

In other words, it was Labour's defeat that allowed Kinnock to come to prominence in the early 1980s, as a fresh face untainted by association with what, at that time, was a much-reviled administration.

In the same way, if Jon Cruddas is to remain a major figure in the Labour movement, and if his critique of New Labour is to retain any potency, it will almost certainly require Gordon Brown to fail in his mission to renew Labour in office and secure that unprecedented fourth term.

Is Cruddas really playing for such high stakes? Or has he simply allowed his pride to get the better of him?

The Junior Reshuffle

Understandably, perhaps, in view of the events of the weekend, there has been very little MSM comment on the junior ministerial reshuffle besides this piece in Saturday's Indy. Which is a shame because for the political anoraks among us, the Full List of HM Government always provides plenty to chew on.

One appointment that has predictably already led to some lively debate on the blogosphere is that of Tom Watson to the whips' office. Watson left a comment on Guido Fawkes' blog last year stating that he would never return to government. In retrospect it is now clear he was taking the piss, but Guido, who took his original comments at face value, has now described Watson as "the most mendacious shit in the House of Commons."

All good fun...but the serious political point here though is that Watson has been brought back to his former role, as opposed to being promoted as undoubtedly would have happened had he not involved himself in the September 2006 "coup." This suggests to me that Gordon Brown is determined neither to punish nor reward those who forced Tony Blair to name the date for his departure, and is instead taking the very wise course of letting bygones be bygones.

Incidentally I did expect to see another of Watson's co-conspirators, Kevan Jones, joining the whips' office too - but with fellow North-East MPs Nick Brown and Alan Campbell already there, perhaps Gordon was worried about prompting accusations of a Geordie Mafia.

Inevitably, there are a few retreads - Jane Kennedy who previously resigned as a health minister on a point of principle, Joan Ruddock and Michael Wills to name three - but nowhere near as many as might once have been predicted. There are no comebacks as yet for such Brownite loyalists as Nigel Griffiths and Doug Henderson, for instance.

The most surprising retention to my mind is that of Margaret Hodge, who was thought to be living on borrowed political time after a series of highly damaging accusations about her time as leader of Islington Council. David Lammy, once ludicrously talked-up by The Sun as "The Black Blair," also lives to fight another day.

In terms of those now poised one rung below Cabinet rank, Blairite quartet Liam Byrne, Jim Murphy, Jim Knight and Pat McFadden all look well-placed. But Caroline Flint, tipped by many for Cabinet this time round, moves sideways and with Yvette Cooper and Beverley Hughes above her in the Cabinet wannabes pecking order, her career may now have peaked.

The list is also notable for one figure who is not on it - Jon Cruddas who apparently rejected a job offer. That is a subject deserving of a separate post which hopefully I will get around to later today or tomorrow.

So was there a deal?

The first thing to say about Gordon Brown's Cabinet Reshuffle is that at least it went smoothly. If this were a Tony Blair production, he would by now have either accidentally abolished the Scottish Office or allowed some middle-ranking Cabinet member to throw a strop that threatened to derail every other appointment.

It also, by and large, has the merit of placing round pegs in round holes. Some of Mr Blair's appointments - Margaret Beckett to the Foreign Office, John Reid to health - often seemed more counter-intuitive than logical.

On the plus side, it is good to see John Denham at the top table, and I am personally pleased that both Ruth Kelly and Peter Hain have survived. A lot of the opposition to Ruth seems based around the fact that she is a Christian, while a lot of the animus against Peter seems to be about the fact that he has a suntan. They are both good people.

Against that, I am disappointed and somewhat baffled to see Stephen Timms go - only a few months after he was talked about as a possible Chancellor - while it beggars belief that the bright, articulate and photogenic Yvette Cooper has missed out yet again on full Cabinet promotion.

But if I had to give an overall impression, it would be that while this is potentially a very strong team, I think Brown may have sacrificed slightly too much experience in his determination to present this as a "new government."

The key word there is "potentially." There are some newly-promoted men and women here who could turn out to be significant political figures, but it has to be said that some of them are currently only household names in their own households.

For starters, I am not at all convinced by Alistair Darling as Chancellor. For me, the best Chancellors were the ones who were strong political personalities in their own right - Roy Jenkins, Nigel Lawson, Ken Clarke, Brown himself.

By contrast the weakest Chancellors have historically been those who, like Darling, lacked an independent power base from that of the Prime Minister - Anthony Barber and Norman Lamont spring to mind.

Likewise, I am not convinced by Jacqui Smith as Home Secretary. She appears to owe her promotion partly to the fact that she is a woman and partly to having successfully poured oil on Labour's troubled waters at the height of last September's "coup."

But she has no experience either of the Home Office or of running a department and with Denham, Hazel Blears and Hilary Benn all having previously served as Ministers of State in the Home Office, she scarcely seemed the most logical choice for that demanding role.

The senior appointment that makes the most sense to me is that of David Miliband as Foreign Secretary. For all his supposed nerdiness, the South Shields MP is a very charming man and has exactly the sort of personal skills that will serve him well at the FCO.

Much is being made of the fact that he is the youngest Foreign Secretary since David Owen but that comparison ends there. Miliband will be nothing like the abrasive young doctor who, in the words of Denis Healey, poisoned everything around him.

Miliband's appointment is also the most fascinating in terms of Labour's internal politics, and will inevitably give rise to speculation of a "deal" under which he agreed to allow Brown a free run at the leadership in return for a major office of state.

Well, if there was such a deal, I think it was probably between Brown and Tony Blair, that Brown received the outgoing leader's endorsement in return for a pledge not to cull his supporters.

The collateral damage in all this was Margaret Beckett, who never really got on with Blair and was always very close to Brown. Yet in the end it was Blair who made her Foreign Secretary, and Brown who sacked her.

Politics? It's a funny old game.

At last, a Minister for the North

I thought Nick Brown would get his old job of Chief Whip back in today's reshuffle. It would have been no less than he deserved for his years of loyalty to Gordon Brown and also for his less-than-gracious treatment at the hands of Tony Blair when he was made the scapegoat for the foot-and-mouth debacle in 2001 and then sacked from the government by phone the following year.

As it turns out, he has been appointed Deputy Chief Whip with a separate brief as Minister for the North, one of a series of ministers for the English regions appointed today. No doubt this will be like red rag to a bull to the conspiracy theorists who think regions are a sinister EU plot to break up the UK, but there has long been a Minister for London and the appointment of dedicated champions for other less favoured parts of the country is long overdue.

Not a bad guess

It seems I've not done badly with my predictions of the shape of Gordon Brown's Cabinet made last Sunday. Of the four major jobs (Chancellor, Foreign, Home, Justice) I managed to get three right, with only Jacqui Smith's appointment as Home Secrertary taking me (and everyone else) by surprise.

I'll give my assessment of the new line-up later, but here is the full list. What I predicted is in black. Where wrong, I have struck out my own predictions and inserted Gordon's actual choices in red.

Prime Minister: Gordon Brown
Lord Chancellor and Minister of Justice: Jack Straw
Foreign Secretary: David Miliband
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Alistair Darling
Home Secretary: Alan Johnson Jacqui Smith
Leader of the House of Commons: Margaret Beckett Harriet Harman
Children, Schools and Families Secretary: Ed Balls
Innovations, Universities and Skills Secretary: John Denham
Health Secretary: Yvette Cooper Alan Johnson
Environment Secretary: Hilary Benn
Business and Enterprise Secretary: Stephen Timms John Hutton
Transport Secretary (and Election co-ordinator): Douglas Alexander Ruth Kelly
Defence and Scottish Secretary: John Hutton Des Browne
Work, Pensions and Welsh Secretary: John Denham Peter Hain
Local Government and Communities Secretary: Hazel Blears
Culture Secretary: James Purnell
Northern Ireland Secretary: Shaun Woodward
Leader of the House of Lords: Baroness Scotland Baroness Ashton
Minister for the Cabinet Office: Ed Miliband
International Development Secretary: Andy Burnham Douglas Alexander
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Ed Balls Andy Burnham
Chief Whip: Nick Brown Geoff Hoon

The following are leaving the Cabinet: Tony Blair, John Prescott, John Reid, Margaret Beckett, Patricia Hewitt, Lord Falconer, Tessa Jowell, Baroness Amos, Hilary Armstrong, and Stephen Timms.